Note 110 — NUMERICAL CATALOGUE, WITH BIOGRAPHICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE NOTES (continued 4)

I read the other day in an otherwise intelligent memoir of Ruskin that "a generation which admired Velazquez had outlived the art criticism of Ruskin." Not outlived, but absorbed, and so forgotten. It was Ruskin who, half a century before, proclaimed the consummate excellence of Velazquez—the "greatest artist of Spain," and "one of the great artists of the world"; the master to all schools in his "consummate ease"; the man who was "never wrong." In his admiration of Velazquez Ruskin never wavered. The citations above given are from his earlier books. In his later period, a picture by Velazquez was included among the "Four Lesson Photographs" as "an example of the highest reach of technical perfection yet reached in art; all effort and labour seeming to cease in the radiant peace and simplicity of consummated human power" (Fors Clavigera, 1876, p. 188).